Blogs

These white snapdragons are easy to identify but I have these other seedlings with a red edging around the leaves (below) which I think are darker coloured snapdragons but I'm not absolutely certain. I will have to wait until they bloom to see for sure.

end of June

The photo above was taken in May. I just took another photo of this plant today which is shown below. It definitely is a snapdragon as I thought.

I love terracotta pots and have bought a few on ebay. Unfortunately over the past few years a number have been broken, mostly due to cold winters when I just left them outside and also squirrels knocking them off shelves and tables. I've researched how to repair them and thought I had found a good solution recently with contact adhesive and even started gluing them with it. I hadn't researched well enough! After more careful reading of the can and web site: 1. it's not waterproof, 2. it's toxic for plants. Back to square one. I have read about swimming pool repair glue which sounds hopeful but have not tried it yet.

Updates to Weed Identification Guide

I've made a few updates to the Weed Identification Guide. If you have any images of weeds in your garden that I don't cover and you'd like to share them with other gardeners, please get in touch (julie at gardenwithoutdoors.org.uk) and I'll post them, thanks!

I just had to add another photo of the muscari. They're looking so good at the moment and the colour is so intense, especially amongst the fresh green.

I was quite surprised to see this tulip in bloom. It's still so cold I didn't expect tulip flowers yet and so many of my tulips planted in previous years haven't survived. I didn't even realise I had a tulip there.

Things are finally happening in the garden withoutdoors after this cold cold weather.

I actually have a few pots of flowers to put on these shelves. The idea was to have some on each level but things have been a bit slow in the garden.

My mahonia has a lot of flowers and the scent is intoxicating. To the left in the photo below are a few of the bergenia but there are many of those as well. These are two great flowers for late winter/early spring colour.

Pussycat

It eventually got hot enough for the water lillies to bloom. This was the beginning of August. The green alkanet is still in bloom. Here's my Pussycat outside next door looking exquisite as always.

This has been quite a poor plant for about 3 years now. It currently has 1 flower. I haven't noticed any other flowers this year. In contrast, my other geranium is covered with flowers.

I thought these might be crocosima so moved them to have some more sun as they hadn't bloomed but then they didn't bloom and I figured they must be something else. This year they've suddenly started to bloom and they are indeed crocosima.

I like teasels although they can be considered a weed, they are also considered wildflowers.  I've never seen a bird on one eating the seeds even though I've read they like them.

A few years ago I planted about 5 different thistles with variable results, mostly disappointing but 1 enormous cotton thistle (in the front garden) which was great. Since then I haven't seen any of the thistles until this suddenly appeared in the back garden. 

It's not nearly as tall as the first cotton thistle I grew.

This vipers bugloss appeared in the front garden a few years after planting them in the back garden.

Pussycat likes to go next door and spend time with my neighbour.

Unlike the previous flowers, these neon violet pansies I actually planted this year in March.

The front garden has grown quite lush after all this rain.